Man Is Wolf to Man: Surviving the Gulag by Janusz Bardach

Author:Janusz Bardach [Bardach, Janusz]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Biography & Autobiography, History, Judaism, Holocaust, Social Sciences, WWII, 1940s, Nonfiction
ISBN: 9780520900943
Publisher: University of California Press
Published: 2014-11-17T05:00:00+00:00

Welcome to Kolyma

Stalin’s face was plastered everywhere—on billboards, ware house buildings, even the cliff sides. His deep-set eyes, bushy eye brows, mustache, and gray army tunic appeared wherever I turned. I had the feeling I was back in Orel at the Tank Academy, where Stalin’s portrait hung in every hall, office, and classroom. Along with the portraits, red banners were posted on the build ings and emblazoned on the cliffs around the port: GLORY TO STALIN, THE GREATEST GENIUS OF MANKIND.

GLORY TO STALIN, THE GREATEST MILITARY LEADER.

GLORY TO STALIN, THE GREATEST LEADER OF THE INTER

NATIONAL PROLETARIAT.

GLORY TO STALIN, THE BEST FRIEND OF WORKERS AND

PEASANTS.

GLORY TO STALIN, THE FATHER, TEACHER, AND BEST

FRIEND OF ALL SOVIET PEOPLE.

UNDER STALIN’S LEADERSHIP, ONWARD TO THE VICTORY

OF COMMUNISM.

UNDER STALIN’S LEADERSHIP WE WILL DEFEAT THE NAZI

HYDRA.

DEATH TO HITLER AND HIS HENCHMEN.

WATCH WHAT YOU SAY, SPIES ARE EVERYWHERE.

DEATH TO THE SPIES.

MORE GOLD FOR OUR COUNTRY, MORE GOLD FOR OUR

VICTORY!

KOLYMA WELCOMES YOU!

I read the slogans with utter distaste. If there was one liberat ing aspect to being a prisoner, it was the escape from the daily barrage of Stalinist indoctrination. The urkas ignored all things political, and in some ways I admired them for it. Though arro gant and vulgar, they displayed a sense of honesty and dignity I had rarely seen in the Soviet military.

The port of Magadan lay nestled in the Bay of Nagayevo, shel tered from the choppy waves of the Sea of Okhotsk. The wharf and a single road had been carved out of the hills, exposing yel lowish clay walls that towered above the port. The thousands of prisoners trudging up the road looked like a giant gray and black millipede.

“Davay! Davay! Podtyanis!” I could barely hear the guards’ commands in the roaring wind, which wailed from all directions like a circle of vociferous wolves; it bit at my face, blew dirt in my eyes, and beat against my ears and head. A sagging charcoal sky grazed the peaks of the surrounding hills. The thick air coated my face and clothing and left a lacy white residue on the shrubs near the bay. I rubbed my arms and licked the salt off my lips. Some prisoners had hats; others bound their heads with scarves. I tucked my chin down, raised my shoulders, and covered my ears with my hands.

The guards divided the prisoners into groups. I found myself corralled into a column of three hundred or so men, and we marched up the road, four abreast. Walking up the steep hill af ter eight days on the ship strained my badly weakened muscles. Not many walked upright. The majority shuffled, hauling their bodies up the hill, each prisoner following his own rhythm, unaf fected by the shouts and blows of the guards. My soaked shoes and foot rags were falling apart. I had taken out the shoestrings and wrapped them around each foot to keep the soles from flap ping open, but the gravel cut through the laces in no time. The soles flapped back open, and rocks got trapped inside.

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